


with the roar of the fire my heart goes to its feet

by soixantecroissants



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, also brief mentions of blood, frank you're doing all right, in which frank worries he's going about this love thing all wrong, karen deserves a good one, some gentle acknowledging of personal trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2019-11-29 12:26:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18223130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soixantecroissants/pseuds/soixantecroissants
Summary: The way you said "I love you." Based ona series of prompts. Rated T to M.Chapter 2: With a hoarse voice, under the blankets.She was starting to lose count of how many times she'd wound up in a hospital room with Frank Castle.Rated T.





	1. true pair

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 27\. A taunt, with one eyebrow raised and a grin bubbling at your lips.
> 
> Or, Frank takes Karen skeet shooting.
> 
> Rated T.

 The first time he watches her line up her shot. That's when Frank knows.

He's brought her skeet shooting, on a range out in Jersey. "This your idea of a date, huh?" she'd asked him when he pulled up to her building, but there was a smile in her voice as she said it, leaning across the console of his truck to kiss him on the cheek.

"Hi," she whispered, and he let the engine just idle a minute so he could turn and kiss her properly, hard and slow like there was nothing that could stop him anymore.

"Hey," he said back, and it was enough,  _he_  was enough, for her, somehow.

Karen kissed him again before settling into her seat, with a quirk of her brow and a teasing "So. You ready to get your ass handed to you for a change?"

(If he's being honest, Frank knew then, too.)

(If he's being completely honest, Frank has always known.)

It shouldn't come as a shock to him, that she knows her way around a shotgun.

It shouldn't, but it does, just a little, when she slips two shells from the box that Frank offers her, loads up both barrels and snaps the gun back into place without so much as another glance at him. He doesn't need to tell her how to hold the thing either, only stands back and watches, and thinks about how it kind of terrifies him that she'll never stop finding ways to catch him off guard.

But it's not that she knows what to do with a gun. It's the part that comes after, the part that really gets to him, these fractions of seconds where Karen goes perfectly still. Blue eyes like steel on the sky, nothing but wind in her hair as she takes a deep, calming breath, and Frank thinks he could never grow tired of watching her like this.

That's when he knows he's well and truly gone.

…

On their first date, he'd tried something slightly more normal. A boardwalk stroll down Brighton Beach, Karen nibbling on an ice cream cone as she swung their linked hands maybe a little self-consciously between them.

They'd walked mostly in silence, still trying to figure out how to do all of this, blinking out the midday sun as an excuse not to look too closely at each other when they smiled.

They lingered by a remote spot on the water, avoiding the larger crowds down by Coney Island – avoiding other things, too. The usual amusement park trappings. All that deep-fried shit, the noise and the rides. The Ferris wheels. The carousels.

Frank felt her hand on his arm, leading him down to the water instead, and he knew what she was thinking. He knew, and he wanted desperately then to just be some normal guy for her, the kind who didn't make her wonder if he was more ghost than man on some days.

"Thought maybe we could stay here a while." She looked down at the last bite of her cone as she said it, and Frank took her chin in his hand, tilting her gaze up to his.

"You got a little something, right there." He swiped his thumb across the corner of her mouth, brushing aside a stray crumb.

"Got it?" she breathed, as he took a step closer.

"Think so," he murmured, "but just to make sure…" and he lowered his mouth to hers, kissing her deep, tasting the sweetness on her tongue.

They made their way back to the boardwalk with his arm slung over her shoulders, the sand still in their toes as he stopped them by one of those claw machine games. He didn't expect much – the damn things were rigged and everyone knew it – but something about the way Karen was smiling at him made him feel like it was worth a shot anyway.

"You feeling lucky today, Castle?" she wanted to know, and he smirked at her, sinking a grand total of five bucks into the machine before just about calling it quits.

"Here, let me," said Karen on his last set of quarters, using her hips to nudge him out of the way. He stepped obligingly back, then watched her in rapt disbelief as she dove the claw down into a sea of stuffed animals, plucking one out with the deadliest aim.

It was a round yellow thing, with goggles for eyes and three strings of hair coming out of what Frank presumed to be some kind of head.

"The hell is this?" he grunted, turning it back and forth between his hands.

"A minion," said Karen, with a perfectly straight face. "You never seen  _Despicable Me_?"

"Despicable who?" scowled Frank, feeling her laugh into his cheek as she leaned in and kissed him.

"I can always give it to someone else," she told him, teasing.

"That right?" said Frank, pointedly tucking the minion under the arm farthest away from her. "Because this 'someone else,' he and I are gonna have a problem if it comes down to that."

Sometimes it was too easy, to find himself reaching for her like nothing had ever stood in his way, and it was during these moments that Frank felt the most helpless. Like it was only a matter of time before he fucked it all up.

He was good for the life-or-death kinds of things, for every catastrophe, for straight up doing what it took to survive. But when it came down to the small stuff, the day-to-day, in-between shit that made everything  _real_  – the shit that made everything mean something – Frank was utterly lost.

He was lost, and a part of him worried that he was always going to be missing the mark where it counted, as far as Karen was concerned.

…

"Pull," she says, and he presses a button to launch the first target.

There's a burst of orange in the sky, clay shattering everywhere as the second trap fires and meets a similarly explosive end moments later.

"Goddamn," says Frank, shaking his head in a grave kind of amusement as Karen hoists the gun up and hands it over to him, not bothering to hide one inch of her smugness. "Goddamn, Page."

She shrugs, smiles. But then it goes a little bit tight at the edges, eyes flashing with something that pains Frank to recognize. "Not my first rodeo, remember?"

She's rolling her shoulder where the shotgun recoiled as he places a tentative hand on the small of her back.

"Y'okay?" He clears his throat, lowers his voice to just shy of inaudible so that she gets his meaning. "Want to talk about it?"

"Never better," says Karen, "And…not right now, if that's okay." For one horrible second, he thinks she's pulling away from him, but then she wraps her arms around his waist, notching her chin into the jut of his collarbone. "Another time?"

"Course," he says gruffly, turning to brush a kiss to her temple. He settles his nose into her hair, breathing in the clean scent of her shampoo, the way that she sighs into him, arms tightening.

The wind sways them in place, nothing but sunlight and greenness around them for miles, and Christ, this thing that he feels, the peace that he gets just from being with her. How it shakes, how it trembles.

It fucking terrifies him, that he doesn't know what to do with any of this.

…

There was one thing. One thing about her that terrified Frank more than anything else.

He'd tried to stay away from her, at first. New York was a big enough place; as long as he kept his shit far out of Hell's Kitchen, odds were their paths would never have to cross. As long as he tried hard enough not to want—

"I know you think you're protecting your girl," Curtis said to him one afternoon, down by the docks as they scoped out a new shipment of dubious goods. "But – hear me out now, Frank – has it ever occurred to you that maybe the person you're really trying to protect here is you?"

"Get outta here, Curt." Frank glowered through a pair of binoculars, eyes going unfocused for a moment as he pretended not to let the man's words sink in.

"Just saying." Curt shrugged, then, in a more offhand tone, "Think I'd like her? This Karen of yours?"

Frank smirked before he could help it, chuckling a rueful "What's not to love?" Well, shit. Curtis was side-eying him hard just as an ominous  _boom_  came from one of the trucks down below, and Frank was saved from answering any more of his friend's bullshit questions for the time being.

He'd tried to stay away from her, but—

Frank eventually wound up exactly where he'd sworn to himself never to go. But he'd been busting his balls trying to pin down these child-trafficking assholes for weeks, and he would've made it in and out of that warehouse in no time, if not for the fact that he hadn't been the only one looking for them.

"Frank!"

He couldn't be sure, in that moment, if he'd just dreamed her voice into existence by thinking about it, too hard and too often, like that kids' book with the shoes and the clicking its heels three times to go home.

The uncertainty froze up his insides in a kind of all-consuming terror, and he didn't see the guy coming at him until the shot had already been fired.

He crumpled like a doll at Frank's feet, glassy-eyed with blood seeping out of his chest.

Frank turned, and there she was, .380 still clutched in her hands, trained at some point near his shoulder. She blinked, but he could tell she wasn't really looking at him anymore.

"Karen," he said, her name scraping his throat and burning like sandpaper on its way out. He wanted to run, wanted to grab her and pull her against him until he could be sure she was real – but he didn't know how to touch her like this, with all the blood on his hands, the bodies piled around them still warm.

As he approached her she slowly lowered the gun to her side, finally letting it drop back down into her bag. The brightness returned to her eyes, by the time he was inches in front of her, her gaze darting all up and down his body like she needed to see him whole too.

"Hey," said Frank, and he held out his hands, palms up in some kind of plea, feeling helpless when all he wanted to do was—

She stepped into him, lightly touching his chest, and the sound that he made as the air was choked out of him, it was almost inhuman.

He dropped his forehead to hers, leaning more of his weight into it than he should have, but she only pressed back, nose sliding over his cheek as she drew in a slow breath. She was trembling, when he gave in and put his hands on her waist, or maybe that was him, he couldn't tell anymore.

He closed his eyes as they swayed, feeling her lips close enough to brush skin more than once, and he tightened his grip, moving over her until their bodies were pressed firmly together.

She took his bloodied face into both hands, and he almost leaned in the rest of the way, bringing his mouth just shy of hers before breathing shallowly into the space between them.

Distantly, he heard the sounds of backup arriving, the police radio static, the muffled shouting through the wall.

"You should go." Karen gave him a gentle push, but he could only shake his head, agitation rippling through him at the thought of walking away from her without – he can't. He can't. He can't do that to her, not again.

"You can't what, Frank?" she murmured, her voice a low hum by his ear, and it took him a moment to realize he'd said it aloud.

"Can't lose you," he rasped. "I can't lose you, Karen," and he needed – he needed her to know that he meant it, in every possible sense of the word. That he – that she—

" _Castle_? Oh, you have got to be kidding me." Mahoney's flashlight beam caught and held against the sides of their faces, jolting Frank out of his daze for a moment. He was almost amused when Karen tried to nudge him back, finally angling her body in front of his with a protective hand on his arm.

"Miss Page," drawled Mahoney, looking pretty unamused about the whole thing himself. "You're early."

"Sergeant," she greeted him, equally dry.

"And what is…this?" Mahoney gestured at them with a deeply perturbed kind of expression, before waving them off with a "Know what? Never mind. Forget I asked. I don't even want to know."

"Look," started Frank. "This was all me. Karen had nothing to do with—"

" _What I do know_ ," continued Mahoney, voice overloud, like Frank had not even spoken, "is that I never saw either of you lurking around here, you got that?" He looked pissed at himself for saying it, but something in his expression softened when Karen turned to mouth a  _thank you_  at him.

"You owe me," he said, and Frank had the distinct impression he wasn't just talking to Karen.

Mahoney stalked off to examine the rest of the scene, muttering, "Jesus," then, "Unbelievable, this guy," as Karen ushered Frank toward one of the side exits.

"When can I—" He stopped them just outside of the door, feeling completely idiotic when she tilted her head at him, waiting. Now really wasn't the time, but he couldn't afford to keep telling himself that anymore. "When can I see you again?"

It took a second, to force his gaze up to hers. Mahoney's guys had all converged to the front of the building, their voices receding, but Frank wouldn't've been able to hear them regardless, not with the way Karen was looking at him.

She bit her lip, a soft smile forming at one end. "You're seeing me now," she offered, a playful lilt to her tone, and when she looked through her eyelashes at him – goddamn.

Frank bent forward, nuzzling into her hair like it was the most natural thing in the world, and it was, it was, so long as he learned to stop fighting it. "You okay?" he asked quietly.

She leaned into his touch, pressing the corner of her mouth to his jawline – not quite a kiss, but a promise of something, and he was ready, he was, to make her a promise of his own.

"Let's get you cleaned up, yeah?" Frank used his hand, careful to avoid any blood, to brush back her hair as she looked him pointedly over with a somewhat incredulous look. "We can, ah, send Mahoney your dry cleaning bill."

Karen shook her head at him, a full smile blooming this time, and he felt his chest tighten in answer, wondering if it was always going to be this way, like the world might stop spinning if she ever stopped looking at him like this.

It was time, Frank thought, to just—

…

He doesn't miss once. Not to make her feel bad when she does – but it's a knee-jerk reaction, at this point, when there's a gun in his hand and a target in his sightline, to take it down without wasting a bullet or succumbing to any kind of distraction.

He is, at the moment, very, very distracted.

He'd packed sandwiches, and they can't be half-bad if Karen's blissful  _mmm_  is anything to go by, the two of them sitting on the back of his truck with their legs tangled and swinging gently over the edge together.

He's trying not to look smug, but he's not being very graceful about it, scarfing down large bites in order to keep from smiling too hard at her. He thinks she's managed not to notice, until she leans in to lick the mustard off his face, lingering to kiss him half-breathless for his troubles.

The tang of her is still fresh on his tongue as she slides herself back to the ground, briefly squeezing his knee before striding over to the next station they've parked by.

She gives it a test pull, still munching on the rest of her sandwich as two targets soar through the air, simultaneously this time, from opposite ends of the field. They match up at a point in the middle before slow-falling into the grass, rolling to a stop as Karen wipes off her hands.

Timed right, she could still hit them both, if she decides not to go for the single shot when they cross. One, two. Easy as that.

He's seen what she can do.

Frank makes his way over to the wooden outpost, ready whenever she is.

He hands her the shotgun.

She loads up the barrels, about to step up to the ledge when she pauses, looks over her shoulder at him.

He ducks his head down to his chest, quirks an eyebrow at her as she gives him a saucy little wink. Everything that matters to him, it's held right there in that breadth of space between her smile and his, and even if it scares the goddamn daylight out of him, it's worth it, to feel all this with all that he's got. Every jagged-edged piece of himself, trying to make something whole again with her, not just the lightness but the shadows that come with it too.

There are lines in her heart that run parallel to his, just as sharp in some places, exquisite and strong.

Stronger, even.

Karen lines up her shot, straight down the center of the field. She's going for it.

 _That's my girl_.

Her shoulders square, feet planted at just the right angle. He can't see her expression from where he's been standing, but he knows the look she must have in her eye, weighed down with ghosts of her own but unshakably blue all the same. "Pull."

There's a single  _crack!_  of sound through the air, clay falling apart in every direction, dusting the sky until there's nothing of it left to break.

"See, now you're just showing off," says Frank, coming up from behind her, earning himself another one of those smiles as she sets the gun aside and leans back into his chest.

"There's still a round left, if you want to give it a shot," she says to him, teasing, tucking her forehead under his chin as he wraps his arms more solidly around her.

"Nah, I'm good." The corner of his mouth pulls up in a smirk. "Besides. I kind of like being shown up by my girl."

"And they say romance is dead," hums Karen, tilting up just in time to see him pull a face at her. She touches her lips to the underside of his jaw, the bob of his throat as he swallows and gathers her closer.

"Thank you," she whispers, and Frank – he doesn't know what he could possibly say that feels adequate, but he's starting to think that that might be okay. That half this thing is still going to be figuring it out, while the other half – the simply loving her half, all of her, with all of him – that much, he has always known.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title taken from 'would that i' by hozier.
> 
> come say hi to me on [tumblr](http://ninzied.tumblr.com)!


	2. as certain dark things are to be loved

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2\. With a hoarse voice, under the blankets.
> 
> She was starting to lose count of how many times she'd wound up in a hospital room with Frank Castle.
> 
> Rated T.

 

The first few days in the hospital were…disorienting.

A rotating door of people in scrubs. White coats, sometimes, with their clipboards, and the pen lights they dug out of their pockets at obscenely odd hours in the morning.

They gave different names, but their faces all looked the same to Karen. Distracted. Unsmiling. Some of them downright apprehensive, lingering near the foot of the bed as they asked their questions and then disappeared for the rest of the day.

The room had no windows. Well – there was one small opening that barely passed as a window, wedged into the wall up toward the ceiling, with two decidedly inhospitable-looking metal bars blocking the view to whatever was down there.

She was starting to lose count of how many times she'd wound up in a hospital room with Frank Castle.

He was half-slumped over, breathing soundly in his sleep when she shifted around to gaze at him. He'd trimmed his hair, sometime in the last few months since she'd seen him, but it looked like it was starting to grow out again at the top, curling slightly over his forehead.

She resisted the urge to reach out and touch it.

He hadn't been sleeping well here. There were shadows under his eyes, and his face was twisted in discomfort, arms twitching as he tossed and turned his head with a grunt. She had to look away for a moment, remembering how his voice had cracked last time, telling her things about his family. Things he was losing, things he might never get back.

"Frank," she said softly. "Frank."

Her hand touched his arm, and he started awake, head whipping around to gather his bearings. The moment his eyes landed on her, everything seemed to go still, and his whole body relaxed back into his chair for a moment.

It was a new thing, to see him wake up like this and not look quite so – haunted, as she'd come to expect. Like her being there had calmed him, instead of making him turn away, and she shouldn't be thinking about what that could mean, really she shouldn't, and yet.

"Hi." Karen sank her head against her pillow, hand slipping away from his arm. The effort of that alone left her winded, and she counted to three for the room to stop spinning again.

"Hey." His voice came out in a rasp, sleep-roughened, but then he sat up with a startling alertness, leaning forward to fix his eyes on her. "You okay?"

She almost smiled at him. "I'm fine," she said firmly. Then, in a much lighter tone, "You know, we should really stop meeting like this."

Frank scoffed out a short laugh. "I'm not the one who's been laid up in bed this time." He clasped his hands together, finger tapping out a nonstop rhythm against his knuckles. He rocked forward in his seat, head bowed and bobbing slightly as he shifted just a little bit closer to her.

Karen watched him for a moment, the way his jaw tightened as he swallowed back whatever he wasn't going to say. How his gaze kept pinging back down to her hand, resting on the edge of the bed near a break in the guard rail.

Slowly, she turned her hand over, opening up her palm to him. Frank gave a small shudder before taking it into both of his, grip callused and warm as he ran a thumb over the bones of her wrist.

She fought the urge to close her eyes and just…feel this, while she could.

It took her a second to realize he was speaking. Low under his breath, muttering, "You're okay," over and over as he held her hand tighter in his. "You're okay. You're okay."

There were so many things Karen wanted to ask him –  _Why, Frank? Why here? Why now?_  – just to hear him say the words. She knew she should be angry with him, for carving himself out of her life and then bulldozing back in when staying away no longer suited his needs. For never giving her a say in the matter.

She should be angry, and she was, but she was something else too, and that…that part was always harder to fight when he was right here, in front of her.

It hadn't surprised her, that first morning she'd woken to find him prowling the length of her room in half-shadow. Moving around like something caged in, until she croaked out his name and he'd been by her side in an instant, looking at her like she was the only thing to keep him from flying apart.

He sat with her during the day, drinking hospital coffee with a satisfied grimace while reading to her whatever he could find, snorting his way through brochures on the walls, magazines that he'd nicked from one of the waiting rooms.

He was careful not to bring in any papers, and she was careful not to ask.

When the horoscopes at the back of the  _Cosmo_  got old, Frank pulled out a book from his back pocket – a slim paperback of translated poems by Pablo Neruda – and he read these aloud to her instead, in a deep, husky voice, never quite meeting her eye each time he paused to turn the page.

She didn't know what he got up to at night while she slept. What she did know was that he would be back in his chair again by morning, with a new slew of bruises mottling his face, knuckles raw as he reached for her hand.

He wouldn't look her in the eye then either.

Karen gave him a squeeze, trailing a fingertip over one of the cuts on the side of his palm. They were scattered all over, in short, sharp lines of red, like he'd punched through glass to get where he needed to go. But he was here with her now, and even though it wasn't enough, she knew it had to mean something to him.

"You're okay too," she whispered back. It sounded more like a question than she'd meant for it to.

Frank glanced up at her then, brow furrowed in the middle like he had genuinely not understood her. He looked so earnest, so boyishly lost in that moment, she found she couldn't help herself anymore.

She smiled, and gently untangled her hand from his, lifting it up to his face instead. He leaned into her touch, and she felt the hitch in his breath as she let her fingers drift up to his temple, carding through his hairline.

She caught him wince slightly, the barest of twitches near his eye, when her finger caught in a lock of hair. It was matted and crusty with dried blood, the skin underneath it still swollen.

"Oh, Frank." She sighed.

He opened his mouth, closed and then opened it again, but he didn't have a chance to say more than a hoarse "It's nothing, all right?" before they heard a brief, perfunctory knock on the door.

Frank drew up to his full height in the chair. He trained a hard gaze toward the sliver of hallway opening into the room as another face poked around the corner, staring tentatively back at them.

He was younger than the others she'd seen – couldn't have been more than just-twenty, if Karen had to guess – and his white coat was shorter too, coming up to an awkward barely-waist length, the pockets crammed full bulging out on either side.

"Uh, hi. Miss—" his gaze darted down to his foldable clipboard, which was turned sideways, and he uprighted it before continuing, "—Page. Hi, I'm George, the medical student on the vascular team today. I just wanted to come check on you, see how the day's been going for you."

She smiled at him in an encouraging way. "Hi, George."

The student turned to Frank, who was leaning sideways back in his chair now, one arm draped over the edge and the other resting casually on his leg. His gaze was unchanged, firm and unblinking, his lip curled up ever so slightly with a dark air of amusement.

George faltered, making a clear effort not to look too carefully at Frank's battered up face. "And mister, uh."

"Castiglione," said Frank.

The boy looked hesitant to speak again, but Karen gave him another kind smile and said, "You can ask whatever you need to in front of Pete, it's okay. He won't bite."

Frank's face gave a twitch, but he said nothing on the contrary, and after another brief pause George cleared his throat and said, a bit quaveringly, "Miss Page, how would you rate your, um, pain today, on a scale of one to ten, one being not so bad and ten being the worst pain you've ever—"

"Four," Karen answered him firmly, trying not to notice the way Frank's trigger finger was starting to look antsy again. "No more than a four. I feel fine."

"Great," said George. "That's really great. And how—"

"Listen, I'm no doctor," Frank spoke up then, "but a four kind of sounds like a few steps below 'fine.' Wouldn't you say," and here he paused to pin the kid down with another one of those stares, "George?"

Karen turned on him, exasperated. "Are you seriously doing this right now?"

"No," stuttered George, "no, Mr. Castiglione is absolutely right. We definitely don't want you to be in any pain, whatsoever. I will – talk to my team about this right away. Are you, um. Having any nausea as well?" He looked mildly terrified awaiting her answer.

Karen shifted gingerly in bed, and said as nonchalantly as she could manage, "Only a little, it's…" She trailed off at the look on Frank's face, like he might pop a vessel if she said the word  _fine_  one more time.

"Great," said George, before immediately backtracking, "I mean, not great, at all, but totally to be expected. Pain and nausea are really common with post-embolization syndrome. Plus fever." He squinted down at his clipboard as it to look for any signs of a fever there, and he missed the way Frank was scowling at him, like he'd cursed her just by saying it aloud.

"But anyway, yeah, we can get you some Zofran for that nausea, um – now." George glanced back up, paling a little at the look Frank was giving him. "Yeah, now is good." He excused himself quickly, but not before jerking his body in a kind of half-bow at Frank. "Sir," he said, and then scattered.

She waited until the door had latched closed before remarking, "You keep scaring them off, Frank."

"Yeah?" His smile was grim, not even close to reaching his eyes. "Only way to get anything done around here, seems like."

Karen gave a sigh, but held out her hand to him again, and he took it, running his thumb back and forth across her knuckles while she looked away from him for a moment.

"What's been hurting?" he asked quietly, and she gestured vaguely at the left side of her stomach with her other hand, careful not to bend her elbow too much around the IV.

Her belly was sore more than anything today, though the pain sharpened to more of a point if she moved around a little too much. The bruising was…bad, made her skin resemble a Monet, but it looked a lot worse than it felt, and her gown covered it anyway, so.

All in all, nothing insurmountable, but the way Frank kept glancing over at her, like she might crash on him if he stopped for one second, it was as though she'd—

— _almost died_ , Karen thought, the reality of it trailing an ice-cold finger down her spine before she could shake it completely away. It was as though she'd almost died, and he hadn't been the one there in time to save her.

Something dark flashed across the corners of her vision, like a curtain drawing closed, but it wouldn't block out the sound of the gunfire, or the slamming of fists into flesh, fire in the side of her body, the screaming that she recognized too late as her own.

 _You're okay_. She focused on the feel of her hand wrapped in Frank's, how he enveloped her in warmth from all sides.  _You're okay_.

He must have caught her flinch, but she'd recovered the next instant, reminding him gently, "The pain's to be expected," much to his audible chagrin.

"You know what, they can take their post-whatever bullshit kind of words they're using to avoid actually  _doing_  something for you and—"

"Hey," said Karen with a shrug, "They managed to keep me from losing a semi-vital organ, doesn't that qualify?" He clenched his jaw, unconvinced, and she softened her tone to something teasing, stroking her thumb over his pulse point. "I'd take a spleen that's in pain over no spleen at all."

Frank breathed hard through his nose for a moment, and then said, plainly, "I'm gonna kill him."

"You're not going to kill him," sighed Karen.

"Wasn't asking permission."

She opened her mouth to retort, but he must have sensed something she didn't, because he was already turning before she heard the door open again.

"Speak of the—" Frank broke off with a grimace. He looked even less pleased when she gave him a wan little smile in return.

But it was Foggy who peered in on them this time, face partially buried in a sea of light blue hydrangeas. His gaze landed on their joined hands, but only for a second as he stepped all the way in and said, "Greetings!"

Frank watched him stiffly, every line of his body held in a challenge as Foggy approached them and set his briefcase down by the foot of her bed.

"Frank," he said, with a solemn nod in his direction. "A pleasure, as always."

Frank made a small grunting sound in acknowledgment, mouth still set in a thin flat line.

Foggy gave him his space and ambled cheerfully over to the other side of her bed, bending down to give her a kiss on the cheek.

"Hi," Karen beamed up at him.

"Hey there, my ass-kicking, name-taking friend. The real superhero of this city, in my book." He gestured graciously over at Frank. "No offense toward present company."

"No argument here, counselor," said Frank, gaze angled down at the ground. "Ain't no goddamn hero." He moved one of his hands away, shifting around in his seat, but he kept the other loosely covering hers, squeezing back when she wound their fingers together.

Foggy was setting down the hydrangeas, rearranging some things to make room – the tulips he and Marci had brought by two days before, some chocolates from Ellison, a vase of white roses that hadn't come with a card.

"Wow, those are nice," he said, stopping to admire the blooms, and Karen had to bite back a smile when Frank seemed to sink even further down into his chair, scrubbing a hand over his stubble-lined jaw and staring hard at the wall next to him.

"I think so too," said Karen, as Foggy straightened and put on a more serious expression for a moment.

"So, Matt got me up to speed."

Frank's hand went very still in hers.

"On, you know, your recovery, and all that."

"Yeah," nodded Karen. "Yeah, he's been—"  _spying_  didn't quite feel like the right word for it "—lending an ear, every time he stops by. Letting me know what the team's been saying out there – since they're so good at  _not_  saying it, when they're actually in the room." She pulled a wry face, then said a bit wistfully, "I kind of miss having Claire around."

"I know I'm beating him to the punch, but it all sounded really promising," Foggy said, in that unshakably upbeat way of his. "Hate to break it to you, Kare, but once all this post-op type stuff has subsided, you're as good as kicked out of here. Early as tomorrow, even, so I guess it's time to start saying your goodbyes."

Her grip on Frank's hand tightened instinctively, and he wasn't the only one looking away this time.

"Besides," Foggy went on, "if you stay here much longer, Mr. Feng at the bodega downstairs is going to start hiking his prices on floral arrangements. Basic supply and demand."

Karen mustered a light smile for him. "You can tell Mr. Feng I already have everything I need right here."

Frank had grown visibly restless, moving around more and more in his seat, though he still hadn't let go of her hand. Foggy was not unaware, touching Karen's shoulder before clearing his throat in a back-to-business sort of fashion.

"You'll probably be interested to know that the people responsible for this—" the briefest flick of his eyes toward Frank again, before looking meaningfully back at Karen, "—have been, um. Put. Away."

"Put away," Karen echoed, in a matching tone of disinterest as Frank fidgeted beside her, full-on scowling at the wall now.

"Yeah, in a manner of speaking," said Foggy vigorously, voice pitched a little higher than usual at the end. "So there's…that."

"There is that." Karen touched his arm, and he gave her hand an affectionate pat. "Thanks for coming by, Foggy."

"Miss you," he said, giving her a big smile. "Come back to us soon. Nelson, Murdock and Page just isn't the same without, you know. The part that has the Page in it." He shuffled back over to his suitcase, saluting Frank as he bent to retrieve it. "Until next time. I would say try to stay out of trouble, but…"

"See you around, Nelson."

"Right. Hopefully not anytime soon, and I mean that in the nicest way possible." Foggy waved, and then he was gone.

There was a beat, after the door closed again, where Karen realized she'd been half-holding her breath, feeling something deep in her gut begin to rise up toward her chest, something that burned strangely like anger.

"Look," rumbled Frank at last, and she felt her whole body bracing for it. "Those guys, they were after you. And they weren't going to stop with just putting you in the hospital." He was getting worked up, knee bouncing as he pivoted his upper body back and forth and back again. "You're kidding yourself, if you thought this was gonna end any other way."

Suddenly exhausted, Karen leaned all of her weight back into the bed, hand going with her, and Frank sobered a little, stretching his arm out to follow.

She rolled her shoulders into her pillow, trying to get comfortable as she asked him, in carefully measured words, "How does Agent Madani feel about you going all…extracurricular again, now that you're on her payroll?"

Frank huffed out a noise of disbelief. "How'd you even—" He squinted at her, then shook his head, tongue darting out to wet his lips before answering. "Told her I was taking some personal time."

Karen kept her eyes trained on the blankets in her lap. "You think she hasn't already figured out what that means?"

"I think she knew she wouldn't be talking me out of it."

"Fair enough."

Karen could feel his eyes on her, trying to read into the flat tone of her words. He leaned closer, and she finally lifted her gaze to meet his, letting out a small sigh as she sagged her shoulders at him, the movement jostling their hands slightly apart.

He looked down, then back up, gaze hooded, voice still halfway lodged in his throat when he asked her, "This the part where you tell me I'm out of line, Karen?" His arm jerked a little, like he'd been about to reach for her with his other hand too before changing his mind. "That it's not my fight, or my place to keep you safe?"

"Why, do you think I'd have a better chance at talking you out of it?"

He heaved out a breath, swaying forward a little with a shake of his head, like he didn't know what he was supposed to do with her like this. "D'you want me to go? That it?"

Karen made a small noise, something that could have been a laugh if not for how hollow it sounded. She turned to face him as fully as she could, and even now with everything feeling so strange between them his eyes still honed in on her left side, searching her over for any signs of discomfort.

He half-rose out of his seat when she winced, but it passed just as quickly as it had come, and she coaxed him back with another squeeze of his hand.

He was watching her so carefully, his face open and bare and intensely vulnerable to her, it almost hurt when she said to him, gently matter-of-fact, "You still don't get it, Frank."

He didn't move, save for the tic of a muscle in his jaw, the bob of his throat as he swallowed.

"I understand you're going to do what you feel like you need to do. I know that you wouldn't…be who you are, if you didn't." She said it with no malice, no judgment, but she was so  _tired_ , of always just – waiting for him, of wondering which would be their last goodbye. "But there's something you need to understand too, okay?"

"Okay." He did raise his other hand this time, closing over her wrist as he turned his whole body to face her. "Okay."

"You don't get to—" There was a crack in her voice that she hadn't wanted to hear, and she broke off for a moment, trying to blink back the burning sensation in her eyes. "You don't get to show up afterward, and think you have the right to act like you've been here all along."

His face blurred, then came back into focus.

He had no right to her heart, unless he was going to stay.

Frank had pressed himself right up to the edge of the guard rail, and it gave a small rattle as he bent over it and lifted her hand. His voice was hoarse, half-shaking its way out. "You think I got somewhere else to be?"

"There's always going to be a somewhere else with you, Frank." She sighed, not to show any anger, but because they both knew it was true, and the ache in her chest only grew when he raised her hand toward his mouth, elbows leaning into the guard rail.

"Karen," he said, and she felt more than heard the low hum of it over her skin, "what if you're the—"

He was cut off by the sound of the door as it opened, muttering, "Oh, for Chrissakes" as he straightened and cursed under his breath some more.

There was a woman speaking – "Here you go, sir" – then the all-too-familiar  _tap, tap, tap_  of a cane, and Matt's voice, "Thank you, Annie, I got it from here," as the tapping grew louder and the noise in the hallway faded back into nothing.

Karen's elbow dipped a little into the mattress as she tried to scoot herself higher onto the bed, loosening her hold on Frank's hand for one fraction of a second. She'd been startled into motion more than anything, but he must have mistaken it for something else, because he was letting her go, moving out of her reach as he stood without another glance back at her.

Matt was watching them – well, just as good as – and Karen couldn't read his expression, but she knew he must have noticed a change as soon as he stepped into the room, the atmosphere going all rigid, the pathetic little way her heart had dead-dropped when Frank let go of her hand.

She folded them both carefully into her lap now, fiddling with a loose thread in one of the blankets. "Hey, Matt."

"Hey." He was speaking to her, but his focus never drifted from Frank. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine," said Karen, and that muscle in Frank's jaw gave another spasm. His hands were balled into fists, one of them unclenching enough to drum a finger repeatedly into his thigh.

She moved her hand toward him on instinct, but he was too far from her now, and she curled her fingers around the guard rail instead, wishing that Matt could've waited five seconds before coming in without warning.

_What if I'm what, Frank?_

_What if – what if—_

"Turns out that your girl, she, uh—" Frank jerked his head back at the bed, never taking his eyes off of Matt, "she's got a funny idea of what the word 'fine' is supposed to look like."

"Frank," she said warningly, but he didn't appear to have heard her, or he had purposely tuned her out as he took a single, deliberate step forward. "Frank, don't."

"I'm pretty sure if she's anyone's girl, it's not mine," said Matt evenly, resting his hands over his cane, and she glared at him too – that they both had the nerve, to talk about her like this as if she wasn't even in the room—

"Besides, she  _is_  going to be fine." Matt inclined his head at her, gesturing toward to the door. "I'm guessing Foggy told you? They've been saying you'll be good to get out of here by—"

"Tomorrow, yeah, I heard," said Karen.

"If everything goes according to plan, anyway."

"If everything goes—" Frank was looking at him like he'd grown two extra heads, disbelief curling his lip at one corner. "You know, I hear the words that you're saying, Murdock, but I gotta tell you it reads like a bunch of bullshit to me."

Matt's face twitched, lips pressing together before he responded, "Is that how you see it, Frank."

"Sure as I stand."

"Because from where I'm standing, killing people is a choice, and that choice has never done you any favors before. What makes you think this time is going to be any different?"

Karen tightened her grip on the guard rail, gritting her teeth in frustration. "Would you two just—"

"Look," said Frank, "you can call it however you like. Don't think it's gonna change the fact that you let all this happen."

"I  _let_  this happen," Matt repeated, with an incredulous laugh. "Yeah. You're right. I let Karen confront Fisk. I let her go after the one drug cartel still openly loyal to the guy. I—"

"Matt,  _enough_."

Frank rocked another step closer. The anger in him was starting to simmer over now, until he was practically vibrating with it. "You call yourself some kind of hero?" She'd half-expected his voice to rise too, but it stayed low in his throat, tense and deadly. "If you'd just done what needed to be done, instead of putting that shitbag of a human back into prison  _again_ , none of this would have happened."

"Killing Fisk would not have made you the better man, Frank." Matt's voice was as calm as she'd ever heard it, but his knuckles had whitened from his grip on the cane, and there was a tightness in his expression too as Frank drew within inches of him.

"Fine by me." Frank ground the words out, that muscle pulsing all the way up to his temple now. "'S'not what I was going for."

"Maybe not," said Matt, slowly setting his cane against the edge of the bed before bringing his hands too-casually together. "But can we agree that it's what she deserves? A man as opposed to a guard dog?"

" _We_  are not agreeing on shit," Karen snapped, shaking with a helplessness that was quickly giving in to rage, "until you can get your heads out of your asses long enough to just  _listen to me_."

"So you think you're the guy for the job?" Frank wanted to know, quietly thunderous, like she hadn't even spoken, and Matt unclasped his hands, letting them hang loose by his side as he took a step forward to—

"Both of you,  _stop_!"

It wasn't the way her voice sharpened at the end, but the hitch in her breath as something twisted in her left side, that finally drew Matt's attention away. He dashed over to her before Frank had even fully turned, and Karen saw the coldness, the fury, promptly drain from Frank's face as he swayed to a stop and looked back at her, something desperate in his eyes.

She let Matt take hold of her hand, his palm wrapping under her forearm to help her sit back up.

"Do me a favor?" she asked. "Whip them out on your own time."

Matt at least had the courtesy to look somewhat chagrined. His hand went to the back of her shoulder, bracing her there until he seemed satisfied that she was okay.

She inclined her head at him, still trying to breathe through the pain as she brushed her fingers over his arm. "I think you should probably go."

But it was Frank who spoke, muttering, "Yeah, I'm already there," and he wasn't looking at her anymore when she glanced up, unable to get anything out past the sudden lump in her throat.

"Frank." She should have known, from the way her chest lurched as though wanting to follow him, that it was too late. He already had his back to her, but he half-turned his head when she said his name, and for one paralyzing second she let herself think –  _what if – what if_ —

She watched him walk away, and she almost wished he'd slammed the door as he left, if only to drown out the sound of everything else that was breaking.

"Karen."

She shook her head, waiting for something, for the door to open again, for the Frank that she recognized to return, when she'd never known him to back down from a fight until now.

"Karen." Matt's voice filtered through, and she was vaguely aware of him motioning toward the door after Frank. "Do you want me to go and…?"

"No." It came out sounding small, and she swallowed before trying again. "No. Thanks, Matt."

There was a pause as he cocked his head back and forth, short craning movements like he was trying to hear all the things that weren't being said. "Do you need some time alone?"

"Please." She managed a watery smile, closing her eyes for a split second when he leaned down to give her a kiss on the forehead.

"I'll check on you later. Foggy said he'd stop by with something more palatable than the insta-mix stuff this place has been serving for dinner."

Karen's smile turned rueful. "He always goes overboard on the napkins."

Matt laughed at that. "I'll let him know."

She dug her hands into the blanket, just to give them something to do as he rose and went back for his cane.

"Hey, Matt?"

"Yeah, Karen."

She ran a hand through her hair, looking down for a moment before saying, quietly, "Thank you. I mean it." There was no fooling him after today, as to how she might feel about Frank Castle, and for all the ways that Matt must disapprove, he hadn't said a word about it.

"Anytime."

He tapped his way toward the door, and she heard it open with an "Oh! Here you go, sir" on the other side, Matt's polite "Thanks again, Annie" in return before the nurse was bustling in to greet Karen.

"I brought you some Tylenol, and something to help with the nausea, my dear." Annie jangled a cup with three pills inside, setting them down by her bed with some water. "Remember, the round white one is supposed to dissolve under your tongue, so be sure not to swallow it whole!"

"I'm actually doing okay right now," Karen told her, "but thank you."

The woman pulled back in surprise. "I see! Well, your friend was quite insistent. He seemed pretty worried about you, you know."

Karen froze, feeling like she might split open again if she overthought this, or hoped too hard for a different kind of ending than the one that he'd given them.

"Between you and me, it kind of looked like he could use a little something himself, the poor thing. That face. 'Nah, you should see the other guy,' he said." She  _tsk_ ed sympathetically. "I can't even imagine it."

"It's probably better if you don't." Karen reached for the medicine cup, gazing down at its contents before tipping the first pill into her mouth.

"Splendid." Annie eyed her a moment longer, and Karen wondered how truly pitiful she must have looked then for the woman to venture next, "Shall we get you out of bed for a shower?"

She unhooked her from the IV pole before helping her swing her legs down to the ground. Everything was just a little bit sore, muscles aching from disuse, and it felt good – distracting enough, for now – to stretch, taking her time on the walk to the bathroom.

"In you go," said Annie cheerfully, after wrapping her arm in a water-tight dressing. "Just toss that gown over the top, and I'll grab you a new one while you wash up."

The water was lukewarm at best, sputtering out in small leaky streams, but Karen stood there until she started to prune and go numb in some places, her fingers feeling like they belonged to someone else's hands when she ran them over her skin with the soap bar.

By the time she dried off, Annie had returned with a fresh hospital gown, still starchy from being just-laundered, along with a plastic hair comb and a new thing of toothpaste.

"That way we can get you all freshened up for when your—" she smiled knowingly at Karen "—friend comes back later."

The comb snagged, and Karen angled her gaze down at her hair, very intent on unknotting the strands as she answered, "I'm not sure that he is."

"Really?" Annie creased her forehead at her. "Oh, I'm so sorry, sweetie. He just didn't seem like the type who wouldn't."

She left Karen propped up in the bed with two extra pillows (winking, "Don't tell anyone where these came from," as she fussed with tucking the blankets around her), her IV locked so she wouldn't be tethered to the pole for the night.

"The doctors say you'll probably be discharged in the morning!" said the nurse, finally grabbing the call light and remote to place them within easier reach. "Nothing to keep you here anymore, isn't that wonderful? Shall I put on some Extreme Makeover before I go?"

Karen left it on mute, turning delicately onto her side to watch the rest of daylight fade through that tiny corner window. It was easier, not facing his chair, to imagine him still sitting there with her, dozing off or muttering his way through whatever book he'd pulled out his back pocket this time.

She hated herself for it, but that had always been the easier thing too.

The pain in her side was minimal now, but every brush of sound against the door, or a voice that even vaguely could have been his, it carved a new kind of hole in her, this knowing that it wouldn't be him. Knowing that there was no point in wanting it to be.

She loved him, and she was so  _angry_  with him, that missing him should still have to hurt her this much.

He was going to kill whomever he needed, to convince himself he'd done right by her, and then she wouldn't see him again until fate landed one of them back here. It was either life-or-death, in Frank's eyes, or it was nothing at all, and there was no place they'd ever been able to exist in-between.

That she'd let herself think otherwise for even a moment—

She fell into a restless sleep, seeing things with clipboards for faces, bullet hole eyes that bled into the paper where her name had been written over and over. Matt was there, fighting them off, but she kept turning and turning, searching for—

She couldn't be sure what time it was, when she eventually came to again. The light from the window was a dim neon blue, but the rest of the room was in relative darkness. The TV was off, and it smelled oddly like a diner somehow, of stale fries and ketchup and hamburger meat.

And, when she took another deep, calming breath, coffee.

Karen closed her eyes, steeling herself for a moment before slowly, carefully turning back over. Her eyes were still adjusting, and they fell across the room first, where the door had leaked in a faint yellow glow from the hallway outside.

She saw the shadows of a side table pressed against the wall, a crumpled bag of take-out and foil still sitting there by a mountain of napkins. She felt a twinge of fondness, shaking her head with a smile, and then she glanced down to her side and everything went unfocused again, quietly reeling to a stop.

Frank was fast asleep next to her, completely motionless save for the slow rise and fall of his breathing. She'd never seen him so still before, so…at rest, and it was hard not to just let herself touch him like this, for fear of taking this away from him.

He'd let down the guard rail on his side, and in its place he'd laid the upper half of his body awkwardly across the length of her bed, one arm splayed down by her thigh, the other bent at the elbow to form a makeshift pillow for his head.

She forced her gaze away for a second, long enough to spot a coffee cup where her medicine had been, an empty fry box with a foil wrapper crammed inside. Behind it was a matching take-out bag – this one still full, as though waiting for her – and an unspeakable warmth began to spread through her, to picture Frank and Foggy silently eating their burgers while she slept with HGTV on in the background.

Karen lowered herself back down, gently sinking her weight into the mattress without disturbing Frank. She tucked her hands beneath her cheek, figuring they were safer there than…anywhere else where they might otherwise be tempted to touch him.

Frank stirred, but didn't wake up, his mouth moving as though forming words before relaxing in his sleep again. His hand was resting barely an inch away from her arm now, and she could feel the heat radiating off of him, the tingling it set off when his finger twitched and brushed up against her skin.

His bruises looked almost black in this lighting, shadows hitting the curves of his face at almost ghost-like angles, but it was all Frank, all of him come back to her, for no other reason than to simply be here like she'd asked.

He made a small noise in his throat, shifting around as he moved his arm up the bed, finally settling back in with his hand loosely cupping her elbow.

Karen watched him with heavy eyes, willing herself not to fall back asleep yet. She couldn't be sure of the next time she'd be able to get him like this again, this feeling like he belonged to her somehow when everything else had gone dark.

She burrowed deeper into the blankets, and let herself have this, just breathing it in, closing her eyes with a sigh as he tightened his grip, sliding his hand further up her arm.

Frank was coming to when she opened them again, blinking hard to shake himself out of it, and it was such a simple, human thing to do that she couldn't help but smile at him as he straightened a little, eyes locking on her.

He swept her over with a sharp, almost militant gaze before relaxing back into the bed. He raised his hand to her side and then hovered it there without quite making contact, like he hadn't been conscious of reaching for her until it was too late to stop.

Karen scooted forward, offering him another small smile, and he ever so cautiously skimmed his hand past her side up her back, gently grasping the hair at the nape of her neck.

He inched his head closer, lifting his arm out of the way and resting it over the top of her pillow, hand dropping down to brush a stray lock of hair from her temple.

The last time she'd been this close to him—

Frank leaned in the rest of the way, brushing his lips to her forehead, just between her eyebrows. He was close enough now that she could feel him against her when she blinked, his breath slow and unsteady as he made his way down to kiss the tip of her nose next.

She tilted her mouth up to his chin, and felt him swallow as he moved into her. He smelled of salt, and vaguely of copper, but underneath all of that he just smelled like Frank, like sandalwood that had been out in the sun, still warm after twilight, wrapping around her like something she was meant to get lost in.

"Hey," he murmured, and she felt the gravel behind it, as though it had pressed right up to her skin.

Her eyes fluttered back open, and he was looking at her, expression entreating, like there was nothing else in the world to him and he needed permission to keep it that way.

"'M sorry, for earlier." His thumb was stroking back and forth across her temple, his other arm settled along the curve of her spine now. "I shouldn't've walked out on you like that. I didn't know how to…" He inhaled, sounding ragged. "Won't happen again."

"It's okay." Karen maneuvered a hand out from under her cheek, gliding her fingertips over his jawline.

His breath came out short, disbelieving, the lines of his throat cording beneath her touch as he swallowed again and asked her, "You mean that?"

"It's okay now," she said honestly, and the corner of his mouth twitched upward, half in laughter, half in something else as he looked briefly away, running his tongue over his bottom lip.

She shifted out of his hold for a moment, nudging herself backward in the bed. His eyes shot up, looking painfully alert, but then his face was softening into a kind of confusion as she withdrew her hand and patted the blankets beside her instead.

"Frank."

"I'm not, uh," and he scrubbed a hand over his jaw, looking abashed as he told her, "I'm not exactly looking to give 'em a reason to kick me out in the morning."

"Well, if I'm being sent home anyway." She said it as lightly as she could bear, a part of her still waiting for him to take the out again.

His mouth quirked up at her, sending the nerves in her stomach aflutter. "Yeah, about that. I was kinda hoping you could maybe, uh. Invite me over sometime."

"Oh, you were, were you?" Karen bit her lip as he smiled down at the bed, a small chuckle escaping him. "When did you have in mind?"

"Been hearing good things about tomorrow," he ventured, and there was something like hope in his voice that made him sound young, playful and sheepish at the same time. "Thought tomorrow would be worth a shot."

She found that she couldn't look at him while she smiled either, finally clearing her throat and saying, in a perfectly reasonable tone, "You know, the people here don't even know how to be in the same room with you for more than two seconds." Frank's eyes crinkled in the corners at her. "I'm pretty sure bodily removing you from a bed will be the furthest thing from their minds."

He seemed to be considering this, surveying the space between them as though to measure the emptiness there, and what it would take for him to cross it.

She'd never used the word  _please_  on him before – he was always the one asking, until he'd been the first to say no – and she couldn't do that to him now either. It had to be for him, just as much as for her, to meet solidly in the middle this time instead of dancing near the edge together, always looking down.

Slowly, with an attentiveness that threatened to break her, Frank lifted himself onto the bed, grunting a little with the effort of holding everything else as still as he could.

"This okay?" He looped his arm over her head, cradling her there with his elbow, and she stretched her body alongside his, feeling dizzy with the warmth of him.

"It's fine," she said, and his tongue caught along the edge of his teeth as he shook his head at her with another laugh.

"Still got a few things to work on." Frank palmed the back of her neck, thumb caressing under her ear. She felt his breath shudder, when she slid her hand over the side of his rib cage. "Just. Tell me where to start, yeah?"

"Here." She moved them backwards some more, to put distance between him and the edge of the bed, until she was snugly between him and the guard rail behind her.

"Don't fall," she told him, only half-joking.

His voice dropped to a decibel that she felt to her core, hoarse and heated and leaving her breathless before he'd even brought his mouth down to hers. "Little late for that."

And then he was kissing her, soft and full, lips moving slowly together as he dipped his tongue inside, and she had long since fallen too, everything heavy and weightless all at once.

He didn't press further, so careful with the way he was holding her to him, his hand drifting down to her side more than once before finding a safer place to rest by her hip. But it felt like a promise, the way he tightened his grip when she sighed into him, a promise of after, of  _them_  before anything else, and with both hands grasping him back, she let herself keep on falling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title taken from pablo neruda's sonnett xvii.
> 
> as always, i'm happy to chat so come say hi to me on [tumblr](http://ninzied.tumblr.com)!


End file.
